This invention relates to apparatus for selectively permitting custodial access to valuable items.
In many situations, the custody of valuable items is entrusted to authorized persons who must be held accountable for the valuable items. One such situation is involved in the airline entertainment field. Many airline carriers show in-flight movies on video projectors and television monitors connected to video cassette recorders. The airline carriers consider it highly desirable to show "first-run" type movies that have not been released in video cassette form for general consumer purchase or leasing. The video cassettes for such "first-run" type movies are extremely valuable and a great temptation exists for pirates to take them, duplicate them, and sell the copies without compensating the copyright owners.
A complicating factor in the foregoing and similar situations involves the relatively large number of people who need to have access to each valuable item to put it to its intended legitimate use. Where any of the numerous persons making up the flight crew and the flight attendant staff have access to these video cassettes, it becomes very difficult to account for the custody of the video cassettes. The perceived unlikelihood of being identified as a pirate increases the temptation to pirate. Also, such perception discourages the licensing of first-run type movies to the airline carriers. Distributors may be discouraged to such an extent as to refuse to provide first-run type movies in video cassette form to an airline carrier at any reasonable price.
In view of the foregoing, it will be appreciated that there exists a substantial need for a practical, easy-to-use, security apparatus for selectively permitting access to such video cassettes or other valuable items in similar situations such as hospitals where drugs are placed in the custody of hospital personnel. It will also be appreciated that a need exists for such security apparatus to incorporate features making it practical to increase individual accountability with respect to custody of such valuable items.